In recent years, for example, with starting broadcasting of a terrestrial digital broadcasting station, existing broadcast channels are changed, and new broadcast channels are added so as to prevent overlapping of the new broadcast channels on the existing broadcast channels due to addition of the new broadcast channels. In this case, a user reexecutes a so-called “channel search” after the broadcast channels are changed. Then, all broadcast channels are swept, and a broadcast wave signal having an electric field intensity equal to or higher than a predetermined threshold value is detected, and then, a broadcast channel of the detected broadcast wave signal is set to “preset information”.
As an apparatus including a function of automatically acquiring channel selection data according to a prior art, an automatic channel selection apparatus including (a) a memory for storing channel selection data, and (b) an automatic channel selection control section for sequentially executing a preset channel selection by allowing a tuner control section to automatically perform a channel selection operation and storing the channel selection data in the memory, is disclosed in, for example, the Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-307406. First of all, the automatic channel selection apparatus judges whether or not the memory is in an initial state. When it is judged that the memory is in the initial state, the automatic channel selection apparatus issues an instruction to the automatic channel selection control section so as to automatically select a channel. Then, the automatic channel selection apparatus starts an automatic channel selection operation to preset the channel selection data in the memory. By employing the automatic channel selection apparatus of the prior art, the channel selection data can be represet without any user's execution of preset instruction operation.